Despite months of silence and years of delays, Overwatch 2 is definitely still a thing and Blizzard finally has a substantial update to share. The beta for the sequel's 5-on-5 PvP mode will go live in late April on PC, and interested players are able to sign up today via the official site.
This test is a big deal for the franchise, considering the current Overwatch PvP standard is 6-on-6. The beta includes 5-on-5 battles, four fresh maps, the new Push mode, upgraded heroes (Orisa, Doomfist, Bastion and Sombra), a revamped ping system and the new character, Sojourn. A closed alpha for Overwatch 2 PvP launched today for Blizzard employees, Overwatch League pros and small groups of other, special players.
This is all good news for PvP mode, but in terms of PvE, it's cause for pause. Blizzard apparently needs more time to work through the sequel's PvE mode, and that's why it's breaking out PvP — a known quantity — for testing first.
"We are changing our release strategy by decoupling Overwatch 2’s PvP and PvE experiences from one another to get new PvP content into your hands sooner, while we continue to work on PvE," the Overwatch team said in its update today. Breezing past the terrible sound of "decoupling," it seems like Blizzard is having more difficulty implementing its new PvE mode than anticipated.
Game Director Aaron Keller said in his video update that there will be additional PvP public beta tests throughout the year, and he promised to provide more frequent updates about Overwatch 2 in the future.
"We recognize we haven't communicated well, haven't kept you up to date, and honestly, we've let you down when it comes to delivering Overwatch content," Keller said, with not a lie in sight.
In November, former PlayStation IT security analyst Emma Majo filed a lawsuit against Sony, claiming the company discriminated against women at an institutional level. Majo alleged she was fired because she spoke up about gender bias at the studio, noting she was terminated shortly after submitting a signed statement to management detailing sexism she experienced there.
Majo later filed the paperwork to turn her case into a class-action lawsuit, and just last month Sony attempted to have the whole thing thrown out, claiming her allegations were too vague to stand up to legal scrutiny. Plus, Sony's lawyers said, no other women were stepping forward with similar claims.
Today, eight additional women joined the lawsuit against Sony. The new plaintiffs are current and former employees, and only one of them has chosen to remain anonymous. One plaintiff, Marie Harrington, worked at Sony for 17 years and eventually became a senior director of program management and chief of staff to senior VP of engineering George Cacciopo.
"When I left Sony, I told the SVP and the Director of HR Rachel Ghadban in the Rancho Bernardo office that the reason I was leaving was systemic sexism against females," Harrington said in a court statement. "The Director of HR simply said, 'I understand.' She did not ask for any more information. I had spoken with the Director of HR many times before about sexism against females."
Harrington claimed women were overlooked for promotions, and said that during annual review sessions, Sony Interactive Entertainment engineering leaders rarely discussed female employees as potential "high performers." She said that in their April 2019 session, only four of the 70 employees under review were women, and while all of the men in this group were marked as high performers, just two of the women were.
"Further, when two of the females were discussed, managers spent time discussing the fact that they have families," Harrington's statement reads. "Family status was never discussed for any males."
The remaining women shared similar stories in their statements, with the common theme being a lack of opportunity for female employees to advance and systemic favoritism toward male employees. The plaintiffs claimed male leaders at Sony made derogatory comments including, "you just need to marry rich," and, "I find that in general, women can’t take criticism.”
One plaintiff alleged that while on a work trip to E3, her superior tricked her into having drinks with him at the hotel bar, hit on her even after she declined, and told other male employees that "he was going to try to 'hit that.'" Another plaintiff shared a story about a gender equality meeting at Sony that had a five-person panel, all of them men.
The lawsuit against Sony comes at a time of reckoning for many major video game studios, including Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Riot Games. Activision Blizzard is facing a lawsuit and multiple investigations into claims of institutional sexism, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, while Ubisoft has long faced similar allegations from former and current employees. Riot Games paid $100 million in December to settle a class-action lawsuit over workplace sexual harassment and discrimination.
Sony has not yet responded to the latest movement in the class-action lawsuit, though it denies Majo's claims of gender discrimination. The company has requested the lawsuit be dismissed, and that will be decided in a hearing in April.
Sony's State of Play livestream today was short on major news, but there was one surprising nugget: Returnal is getting a beefy update on March 22nd. Returnal: Ascension adds co-op capabilities and a new survival mode to the game, and it'll be completely free.
Returnal is a PlayStation 5 exclusive developed by Housemarque. It's a roguelike shooter where players are trapped in a time loop on a hostile alien planet, and it gets a lot of things right, including massive enemies and a punishing reward system. As a PS5 exclusive, Returnal makes good use of the DualSense controller's haptics and Sony's 3D audio tech.
Ascension will be Returnal's 3.0 update. The game's 2.0 update in October 2021 added photo mode and a suspension option that allowed players to save their progress mid-run, but only under certain conditions. It is a roguelike, after all.
A lot of people are going to compare the Steam Deck to the Switch, and that’s totally fair, but after spending more than a week with Valve’s portable PC, I think there’s a better analogy at hand: The Steam Deck is what happens when the Vita and the Wii U get drunk on Linux and make a big baby together.
The Steam Deck combines Valve’s familiar PC storefront with some of the best ideas from these iconic, discontinued consoles, and packs all of it into a beefy bit of hardware. Just like Sony and Nintendo did all those years before, with the Steam Deck Valve is silently asking, does anyone need this?
The short answer is, no. But you’re still gonna want one.
When I unboxed the Steam Deck and got a good look at Valve’s handheld PC for the very first time, I laughed. I couldn’t help it, but this thing is seriously so large it’s funny. The Steam Deck is 11.7 inches long, 4.6 inches tall and 1.9 inches thick, and it weighs 1.5 pounds. For comparison, the Switch Lite and Vita each weigh about half a pound, while the Wii U gamepad weighs just over 1 pound.
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The Steam Deck’s heft affects how I interact with every game in my Steam library. I find myself holding the system low in my lap, often propping it up on my thighs and craning my neck down in order to play. After about an hour in this position, the muscles along the back of my head start to ache, and I’ve been calling this phenomenon Steam Deck neck. It’s easily remedied with some stretching and repositioning, but the Steam Deck always ends up back on my lap and the cycle of discomfort continues.
And then there’s the sheer size of the thing. Anyone with smaller-than-average hands, here’s where you need to listen up.
The Steam Deck is a full-size controller with a 7-inch LCD touchscreen in the middle; it has big, rounded grips, haptic trackpads on either side of the screen, and analog sticks and face buttons above those. Two bumpers line the top, with two triggers and four clickers on the back. At more than 4.5 inches tall, I’m unable to rest the Steam Deck on my palms while also reaching the top buttons with my thumbs, and even using the analog sticks is difficult in this position. I have to support the controller by clutching the grips about an inch above the bottom, straining my pinky fingers and encroaching on the back buttons in a way that renders them useless. It truly feels like my hands are too small for the Steam Deck.
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Each game uses a unique input method, and some titles cause more aching in my palms than others. Swapping rapidly among the right analog stick and face buttons, as in action games or shooters, tends to speed up my discomfort. But trackpad- and touchscreen-heavy games like Inscryption and World of Horror allow me to move my hands down or even just place the Steam Deck on a table, where I can tap away with my tiny fingers.
At the risk of narrowing my audience even more, I’d like to note that full-set manicures present a specific problem with the Steam Deck: The options tab is the perfect thumb-nail distance from the X button, and I’ve accidentally pressed it a handful of times while slaying demons in Devil May Cry 5. To all six of you who care, you’re welcome.
The ergonomics of the Steam Deck will vary with each user, and people with larger hands than mine will likely have a less crampy time. But I bet their palms will still get sweaty.
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The Steam Deck runs hot, but it’s never scalding to the touch — instead, it feels like all that heat is dispersed throughout the device, including in the controller grips. After about 30 minutes of playing any game, my palms get warm enough to start sweating, in a way that’s never happened with a DualSense or Xbox controller. The first time this happened, I blamed it on the pile of blankets I was buried under, but sweaty palm syndrome is a consistent occurrence with the Steam Deck. Additionally, the system fan regularly blows hot air from the top of the machine and this makes a noticeable amount of noise, though it’s nothing extreme. Noisewise, you’ll be fine pulling this baby out on public transportation. Sizewise, that’s your call.
Because of the sweaty palms, finger cramps and Steam Deck Neck, my play sessions max out at two hours. This isn’t terrible in terms of actual playtime, and it means I’ve never run into a battery issue with the Steam Deck. Valve says the system will get two to eight hours of life on a single charge, depending on what games you’re playing and their settings. This aligns with my experience — Devil May Cry 5 definitely sucks more juice out of the battery than World of Horror, as does playing above 30 fps and 50 percent brightness. To that end, there's an option to lock games at 30 fps and it's possible to adjust screen brightness at any time.
This review is based on the mid-tier Steam Deck with 256GB of NVMe SSD storage, priced at $530. There’s also a 512GB model with a high-speed SSD and anti-glare etched glass that costs $650, and a 64GB version that’s just $400. Aside from offering a dismal amount of storage space, the 64GB model uses much slower eMMC storage, and I haven’t seen what that looks like in person.
All versions of the Steam Deck have the same AMD APU, which shares a lot of DNA with the chips inside the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, along with 16GB of fast RAM, a 40Whr battery and a 7-inch 800p 60Hz display. SteamOS runs the whole damn thing and it takes up 30GB on my mid-tier model, leaving it with 227GB free — so keep that calculation in mind, too. There is a high-speed microSD slot so players can expand their libraries and even play games directly off a card, but internal storage is definitely faster than this method.
Now, the games. The Steam Deck is technically a handheld PC, which means it can theoretically support every game in Valve’s library, though this isn’t the case out of the box. Some Steam titles are officially optimized for the system, while some are not supported at all, and others are functioning on pure hope. There are four optimization levels — Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Untested — and so far, roughly 10 percent of my library falls in the Verified category. Valve rolled out a website where players can see how their games will fare on the Steam Deck, and across the board, the bulk of these titles are falling under the Untested category.
There is a workaround here, if you're willing to put in the effort. The Steam Deck runs on a Linux-based operating system because that's very much Valve's thing, and this is the culprit behind the device's compatibility issues. While some games run natively, the majority utilize Valve's Proton compatibility layer to run Windows games. Proton has improved significantly over the years, but there are still a lot of issues, especially with online games that have aggressive anti-cheat solutions. If there's a specific game you're curious about, there are sites that collate user reports like ProtonDB which should give you an idea of how well something will run.
However, the Steam Deck is an open platform, and it's possible to install Windows on the system and boot up Steam from there, with all the compatibility of a standard PC. This isn't what the device was built to do, presenting a handful of UX concerns out of the gate, and more importantly, it's not how the majority of owners are going to use the Steam Deck. For most players, it'll be all about compatibility labels.
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I haven’t had a game-breaking issue with any Verified game on Steam Deck, and at worst, I’ve had to spend a few seconds adjusting framerate and brightness settings. In my experience, games labeled Playable generally perform well, though they often require a second glance at the control layout. Playing Inscryption, I was stuck on a scene for a few minutes before realizing I simply had to pull up the on-screen keyboard, which is accessible in the Quick Settings overlay at any time. A prompt appears before installing Playable games outlining their known issues on Steam Deck, like small font or mouse-and-keyboard icons, and it’s easy to make a decision about installing from there.
When it comes to Untested games, you’re on your own. This is the Steam Deck’s wild west, and I’ve seen it all from titles in this category: Artful Escape won’t even load past the developer logo; BPM plays fine but it’s visually blown out; Kentucky Route Zero runs beautifully.
Figuring out how to unbreak a partially supported title on Steam Deck is a game in itself. My advice: If there’s a title you desperately want to play without interruption or frustration, then don’t play it on Steam Deck unless it’s Verified. You’ll likely just be annoyed and disappointed and probably a little sad.
This also might happen when trying to pair Bluetooth devices with the Steam Deck. This process has been hit-and-miss for me — my Xbox controllers refuse to connect to the Steam Deck (no, they weren’t paired with another device at the time) and my Samsung Galaxy Buds don’t even show up as available. However, my new Marshall Bluetooth speaker connects to the Steam Deck without fuss.
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The device's USB-C port makes it possible to hook up a hub and connect a mouse, keyboard, display and ethernet cable, though I didn't try this out. The official Dock, which is designed just for this use case, won't come out until late spring and I'll give it a whirl then.
I tested a handful of familiar games on Steam Deck, including Hades, Celeste, Devil May Cry 5, Inscryption, Cuphead and World of Horror, and I wouldn’t say that it felt better to play any title on the handheld, rather than PC. However, the Steam Deck delivers something worthwhile: flexibility.
The Steam Deck allows me to step away from my desktop, where I spend all day working, and play my games somewhere I can fully relax. Sure, this is already possible through Steam Link, but the Steam Deck makes the process more luxurious. I’ve loved having one in the house, and truly, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I just moved and I don’t have a TV yet, so I haven’t been able to escape to my living room after work as usual. The Steam Deck has filled the void left vacant by my PS5 and Xbox Series S, allowing me to play on the couch at the end of the day — at least until my neck gets sore.
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The Steam Deck’s battery life is less of an issue than I thought it would be, largely because the way I use the machine is different than I first imagined. Initially, I figured the Steam Deck would be more like a Switch Lite, something to throw in my bag and take out into the world, a truly mobile version of my Steam library. But in practice, I use the Steam Deck more like a Wii U — it stays at home and I play it on the couch after work or in bed at night, never far from its charger or a sensible tabletop to rest it on.
The Steam Deck is a Frankenstein synthesis of a Wii U and a Vita, but with Valve’s DNA coursing through its cables. It’s a Steam Controller and a Steam Machine in one hefty package, and I’ve come to appreciate it for what it does best. The Steam Deck isn’t a mobile device to take on your everyday commute; it’s a Steam library extender, opening up new places to play around the house. I wouldn’t recommend the Steam Deck as an introduction to PC gaming, but for millions of existing Steam users, it’s worth the price of entry, even if you just play a few times a month, two hours at a time.
When Guerrilla Games revealed that Horizon Forbidden West would have underwater gameplay, I was not excited. I was in the minority with this feeling, but I have a ridiculous, lifelong fear of large things in deep bodies of water, and games in these settings genuinely freak me out. I’m still recovering from the shark scene in Batman Arkham Asylum.
However, Forbidden West has won me over, thalassophobia and all. The underwater environments are terrifying and filled with gigantic robot monsters, but they’re also beautiful and rich, inviting Aloy to explore new layers of her world. From the submerged ruins of Las Vegas to a volcanic hot spring buried under a mountain, swimming is shockingly one of my favorite activities in Forbidden West. That, and overriding Tallnecks.
Forbidden West takes place right after the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, and Aloy is once again on a quest to save the world. She has to restore GAIA, a planet-wide AI system that will rid the lands of a devastating disease, and also investigate waves of murderous machines that are appearing across the continent. She has a Focus, which allows her to scan enemies and environments for information, unlocking the secrets of past civilizations.
SIE
Aloy travels to the southwest and west coast of the former United States, crossing snowy mountaintops and sand dunes dotted with Joshua trees before arriving at the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here, it has to be said: Forbidden West is gorgeous. I played on PlayStation 5, and some of the landscapes in the game left me breathless. There’s something special about sunsets in the southwest; they burn brilliant reds and purples in the thin desert air, and Forbidden West captures this essence beautifully. I should note that the game’s Photo Mode tends to blow out nighttime scenes, so it’s harder to save those moments as they appear during play.
As Aloy heads west, hostile tribes and violent machines regularly appear in her path, providing ample opportunities to level up, test new skills, collect special valuables and override some robots to make them rideable — yes, even the flying Sunwing that's heavily featured in the game's marketing.
SIE
My personal favorite mount is the Bristleback: It’s a big warthog-like machine with a plump booty and the ability to harvest metal shards as it waits for Aloy to finish a mission. Returning to piles of sparking Bristleback salvage is a necessary perk of saving the world, as far as I’m concerned.
Plenty of familiar faces join Aloy on her journey, including Varl and Erend, and she ends up collecting new companions like Pokemon at her west coast base. There are also new threats in this world, and without spoiling any story points, the game’s narrative arc covers class warfare on an extreme scale, with egocentric trillionaire technology leaders at its core.
The new friendly characters have distinct personalities, backgrounds and skills, and they’re incredibly charming. By the final missions, it feels like Aloy has her own little Scooby-Doo gang, Bristleback included.
SIE
However, Aloy is often on her own – and this is especially true when it comes to underwater levels. Aloy ends up crafting a breathing apparatus that allows her to dive infinitely, and with the whole oxygen problem out of the way, she’s free to investigate a series of vast underwater landscapes, slinking among massive Snapmaws in the process. Her Focus behaves differently beneath the surface, pinging like submarine radar when it’s left on. Underwater, it feels like Aloy is flying around an alien planet, and these moments are so quietly engaging I almost forget to be scared of the giant, murderous dinosaur robots that are also swimming around.
Almost.
The most memorable underwater environment is Las Vegas. It’s submerged but still soaked in neon coral, with crumbling escalators leading nowhere and buildings cracked through with algae and seaweed. The base of the replica Eiffel Tower grounds the entire scene in a twisted kind of reality, and it makes Aloy’s fight to save the world feel more urgent. Once the water drains out of this space and Aloy has to fight off a contingent of amphibious robots, a new battlefield emerges with opportunities for parkour, sniping and sneaking on the ground. Water adds versatility to Forbidden West, not just terror.
Underwater gameplay is only a portion of Forbidden West, and most of the action plays out on land. This game is truly open world, with side quests, battles and interactive moments scattered around an expansive map. Aloy ends up at various villages and fortresses, where she’ll often find hunters, cooks, designers and weapons dealers to trade with, and a workbench to upgrade her equipment. Different outfits grant Aloy specific perks, while weapons and clothes can be infused with ability upgrades. Crafting and loadout customization are significant aspects of Forbidden West, and alongside the skill tree, these features put a generous amount of power in the player's hands, making each win taste even sweeter.
Two new tools stand out in Forbidden West for their fun factor alone: the Shieldwing and the Pullcaster. The Shieldwing is technically a glider, but in action it looks more like an illuminated umbrella, which is less hardcore but still perfectly effective. Whatever you call it, Aloy can use the Shieldwing to cover large gaps and leap from mountaintops, giving her more room to roam. The Pullcaster is a grappling hook that Aloy uses to open vents and snap to out-of-reach locations, and it’s especially helpful in the middle of intense fights against multiple machines. Both of these tools are reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and they add a delicious layer of mobility and environmental puzzle-solving to Aloy’s journey.
SIE
Any area that looks climbable generally is, allowing Aloy to scale mountainsides and abandoned buildings with relative ease. Pressing R3 on the DualSense highlights areas that Aloy can grab onto in yellow, and there are usually multiple ways to reach the same destination.
This led to at least one instance where I got stuck – while hunting for valuables, I scaled an old tower and crouched through a suspiciously small crack in its façade. Inside, I found a crate and cracked it open, and then I tried to leave, only to find escape impossible. I jumped around for a few minutes before restarting from my last save, which thankfully wasn’t long before. Use those campfires, people.
SIE
My biggest glitch occurred in the middle of a big battle against a mammoth-like Tremortusk and its captors. Mid-combat, I activated my Valor Surge, a special ability tied to my skill tree choices, and instead of turning on camouflage, I entered a weird kind of developer view, where Aloy was invisible and I was able to fly around the battlefield, untethered. I eventually fixed this by selecting a new weapon, which brought Aloy back into view.
Given the sheer size and density of Forbidden West, these issues feel incredibly small, and they haven’t spoiled my positive perception of the game. I mean, I haven’t even talked about the Tallnecks yet – just like in Zero Dawn, I’m lowkey obsessed with these lanky loafs, and I will always detour to climb all over them. And override them, of course. The view from the top of that satellite head is worth it, every time.
SIE
There are plenty of new cyber-beasts in Forbidden West, including Tremortusks, an invisible bat called a Dreadwing, and massive cobras called Slitherfangs, and they’re all intimidating in their own special ways. Scanning enemies with the Focus reveals their weaknesses and strengths, including elemental damage possibilities and whether their weapons are detachable. My advice is to take fights slow and strategize, just like in Zero Dawn – use environmental traps whenever possible, take the time to investigate the machines before attacking, hide in the grass and Silent Strike when no one’s looking. And when that all flies out the window, Pullcast your way to safety.
Forbidden West is a triumph in many ways. Its world feels alive and packed with secrets, and the story advances swiftly as Aloy makes her way to the Pacific coast. Combat is frenzied, with an arsenal of elemental weapons at Aloy’s disposal and multiple ways to attack any situation. The environments range from flooded, neon-lit facilities to expansive deserts and thick jungles, complete with dynamic weather and time progression. The machines are as stunning as they are terrifying. And throughout it all, Aloy’s voice actor, Ashly Burch, tells an emotional, complex story of survival, collaboration and evolution, demonstrating incredible versatility along the way.
This is a game worth diving into, no matter how afraid of the water you are.
Classic role-playing games EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound will be available on Nintendo Switch Online starting today. Safe travels, Ness and friends.
EarthBound Beginnings is also known as Mother, and it originally hit the NES (locally known as the Famicom) in Japan in 1989. Its sequel, EarthBound, is a SNES classic that hit Western markets in 1995, and the entire series has been pivotal to the RPG genre, with mechanics and visual stylings that still influence games to this day.
Today's announcement wasn't a total surprise — EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi tweeted some hints just hours before the Nintendo Direct went live.
The release date for Splatoon 3 is clarifying with each new Nintendo Direct, and the game is now slated to hit Switch this summer. Previously, all we had was "2022," so this is a nice little update.
To accompany the tighter release window, Nintendo confirmed Splatoon 3 will have the cooperative Salmon Run mode popularized by Splatoon 2. Traditionally, Salmon Run supports one to four players in a collective effort to collect Power Eggs by splatting hordes of enemies. This time around, teams of inklings will face off against a chunky salmon with a mohawk, cross-body chains, and the scream of a tiny, synthesized Godzilla.
All together, the new old mode is called Splatoon 3 Salmon Run Next Wave.
The magic in Ghostwire: Tokyo is fat and tangible, glowing between Akito's palms and streaming from his fingertips in sturdy golden ropes, binding enemies to one another before exploding them into pieces. From a first-person perspective, Akito rapidly contorts his hands into a series of precise shapes, forming orbs of elemental energy and supernatural strings before unleashing their power on the ghosts and demons sauntering along the streets of Tokyo. Magic isn't the only weapon at Akito's disposal, but it's certainly the most stylish one.
Tango Gameworks
Developers at Tango Gameworks, the studio founded by Resident Evil and Devil May Cry veteran Shinji Mikami, shared a video on Thursday demonstrating the basic gameplay mechanics of Ghostwire: Tokyo, but they also held a private briefing for press where they showed off about 30 minutes of additional beta footage. The private demo focused on world-building, battle strategies and the mind-melting Utena Spaces that turn some buildings into time-sensitive psychedelic death traps.
In Ghostwire: Tokyo, a mysterious fog rolls through the city and devours everyone it touches, trapping their souls in the process, until Tokyo is deserted. Hordes of well-dressed demonic creatures move in, taking the place of the living. Akito is a young man who wakes up in the center of the chaos with a voice named KK inside his head and supernatural powers in his veins, and he begins his mission to save his sister and take back the city.
With a realistic Tokyo as its backdrop, Ghostwire feels like a first-person, paranormal Yakuza. Among the neon signs and abandoned cars, the streets are packed with enemies that resemble Slenderman, floaty tissue-paper ghosts, headless schoolgirls and areas of corruption that Akito needs to cleanse. He travels around the city on foot, but he also has a Tengu ability that allows him to latch onto flying creatures and scale skyscrapers in a single grab.
Tango Gameworks
Ghostwire: Tokyo uses an upgrade system based on soul power, using the spirits Akito saves throughout the city to make his magic hit harder. There's also the shop, which is housed in a small convenience store and operated by a happy, floating cat (whose name is probably definitely not Garfield). Here, Akito can purchase food for health and other perks, or he can just hang out with an entrepreneurial feline for a while.
The newest bit of the press preview is contained to a single, multistory apartment building. After completing a task in one of the rooms, the world around Akito transforms into a trippy house of horrors, with black goo sliding down the walls and an oil-slick barrier keeping him trapped inside the building. A timer begins ticking down in the upper lefthand corner of the screen, offering Akito less than 10 minutes to clear the distortion before it kills him.
The building around Akito flips upside and sideways as he walks through its halls — the walls, floor and ceiling are covered in amoeba-like textures, then they shift to show a city drenched in static, and then they're dotted with black blobs crawling like cockroaches. This section is reminiscent of the Ashtray Maze in Control, with PT vibes and goo styling by Devil May Cry. In the hands-off press demo, Akito finds the sources of the distortion and destroys them with four minutes left on his timer, leaving him free to explore more.
Tango Gameworks
In the final stages of the preview, Akito completes a quest given to him by the restless soul of an old woman — he enters her apartment and rescues a helpful spirit from the ethereal clutches of a terrible, creepy landlord. The characters here are transitory, but they still have strong, slightly silly, very spooky personalities, which is perfectly in line with Tango Gameworks' style.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is due to hit PlayStation 5 and PC on March 25. It's a timed exclusive on PS5, and after one year it'll be free to hit other consoles. This is a slightly messy situation, considering the game is being published by Bethesda, a studio that Microsoft purchased for $7.5 billion last year. Moving forward, it'll be likely to see Bethesda games on Xbox platforms first (or only), but Ghostwire: Tokyo snuck its way onto PS5. Ah, the benefits of being a ghost.
Since a group of 34 quality assurance testers at Raven Software voted to unionize earlier this month, the studio's parent company, Activision Blizzard, has been making moves that will undermine that support and make it harder for workers to organize. This morning, Activision VP of QA Chris Arends sent the clearest message yet about where executives stand on the unionization effort, and (spoiler) it's firmly against.
In an internal, locked Slack channel on Monday morning, Arends asked himself six questions about the potential union and provided answers for employees from Activision's point of view, as shared on Twitter by union organizer Jessica Gonzalez. Employees were unable to respond to the message. Each answer diminished the benefits of unionization, but the fourth prompt offered the most explicit takedown of the organization process. It reads as follows:
We heard that the union will protect employees and provide employees with job security?
Job security here at ABK rests with our ability to produce epic entertainment for our fans. A union doesn't do anything to help us produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity. All of this could hurt our ability to continue creating great games.
The fifth answer argued that union-driven bargaining takes too long to be effective, stating the obvious in the process: "A unionized company cannot act quickly on its own if the union does not agree with its position." The final answer reminded employees that they don't have to vote in favor of the union when an election takes place.
On Twitter, Gonzalez called the post "sad."
This is the latest move from Activision designed to halt momentum on the unionization process at Raven. Just three days after employees announced they had gathered a supermajority of signatures required to unionize under the name Game Workers Alliance, Raven head Brian Raffel revealed a reorganization plan that breaks up the studio's QA department, moving employees to disparate teams.
Communications Workers of America, which is backing GWA, said on Twitter that the shuffle was "nothing more than a tactic to thwart Raven QA workers who are exercising their right to organize."
Activision also failed to voluntarily recognize GWA, which means they'll have to seek a vote through the NLRB, a process that can take years. Additionally, Activision is pushing for the vote to include all employees at Raven, rather than only QA workers, reducing the potential for success.
Arends' Slack message — trying to convince employees that unions will make their works lives slower and crappier — falls in line with Activision's previous tactics.
Activision Blizzard is currently the subject of intense scrutiny from multiple angles. GWA will be the first union at a AAA game development studio in North America, potentially setting the stage for more organization across the industry. Plus, Activision Blizzard is the subject of a lawsuit and multiple investigations into reports of systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the studio, with incidents allegedly dating back decades.
And finally, Microsoft is in the process of buying Activision Blizzard, Raven Software and all, in a deal worth $69 billion. It'll be the largest acquisition in video game history and it marks the industry's era of consolidation. One day after news of the acquisition went live, Activision told the SEC that there were no unionization efforts underway at its studios, though in the months before, executives told Raven employees to "consider the consequences" of signing union cards.
